hiperboreanpirates

[hiperboreanpirates]

{Hiperborean pirates #6}

-You've got to be kidding me.- Martin said, flabbergasted at the sight

-Even the ones who believe in it have the same reaction.- Carla said, matter of factly

-Is this a screen?- he tapped the glass -No it can't be, I'd notice by looking from a different angle. How is this done? Is it some model? A huge diaorama?

-No it's not, it's real.

-Of course you say that, it's a test, the agency got me back and you are just using the opportunity to test my critical thinking.

-No they didn't, association leader was right, you wouldn't believe it until you saw it upclose. No worries, we'll get there soon.

-What do you want me to believe? That earth is a disk floating in the void?

She sighed.

-No, you'll see.

-What if I see? It's gonna be some special effects anyway, I'm not falling for that!

-You realize that you sound like a conspiracy theorist?

-The agency had been paying me to do that for a while now! It stays with you if you do it long enough! At least this time I'm arguing for something that makes sense!- he yelled at her -Sorry, didn't meant to yell...

-Calm down for now, we'll get there soon.

As the helicopter got closer to the edge of the glacier Martin could finally see what lurked beyond it. Fortunately for his sanity it wasn't a void of space, but a blanket of clouds, nevertheless it kind of confirmed that they weren't just flying low to make the coast of antarctica look like the edge of the world.

Neither of them addressed it, he was still shamed of shouting at her and she seemed to be waiting for something. Then he saw some blue peeking from between the clouds, but he was too absorbed by the line of the coast to think about it.

Finally they passed it, a massive wall of ice showed itself to them, but that wasn't the end of it. Below between the clouds there were what looked like kilometers of rocky cliff.

-Wha...

-You'll see in a moment.- Carla said as the helicopter started to lower itself -We need to get below the clouds.

It didn't take long at all before what was previously covered by a blanket of clouds revealed itself to them.

-We are at altitude, you can open the door safely.- they heard the pilot from the speaker.

Martin stilled, unwilling to hasten the moment when he'd be given a proof he'd fail to refute. Carla on the other hand didn't have such qualms and pulled the latch open, sliding the cabin door to the side, revealing what looked like a few kilometers high cliff going to what looked like an ocean.

-So- she begun explaining -what you see here is the edge of the shell of "Earth", she grew too big long ago and doesn't dive anymore and that's what allowed society to persist. Last recorded time was biblical flood if you care to know.

-Wait, hold up, what do you mean shell? What do you mean she? And what do you mean dive?

-Ah right, I forgot, need to ecplain from the start. The globe is a much bigger sphere than you thought and it's all water. Oh and the world as you know it is on top of a shell of a giant turtle.

[hiperboreanpirates]

Hi, I've read the newest part you've posted, and I wanted to tell you, the quick pace of it may not let the reader linger on the picture, but it's I hope it does fall over the Edge! Really nice twist, waiting for the next bit

Thanks! Both for reading and a comment. I'm sorry if it takes me a while to write each piece, this for now is a side project that I write when I have free time between other things. Glad you like them anyway though!

[hiperboreanpirates]

{Hiperborean pirates #5}

Martin woke up, shivering. He immediately noticed the noise coming from above, right afterwards he noticed how hungry he was. They must have sedated him after knocking him out, there is no way he'd take long enough to wake up to get this hungry otherwise.

'How did I not wake up from this noise though?' He thought. Feeling a pain in his back he shifted his position, right when he did the bag got pulled of his head.

-Carla?- he asked, staring at him was his fellow government spy

-Hello Martin- her tone was clearly filled with mild ridicule of his circumstance

-Where are we, what's the plan?- he asked, looking around what looked like a cabin of a helicopter

-Flying over antarctica, we are taking you to the edge as per orders.

-Very funny and what are we actually doing? What is "taking me to the edge" the code for?

She sighed.

-You'll see, you won't believe it even if I tell you yet.

-I won't?

-You definitely won't.

-Fine, but can you at least untie me?

She nodded and got to it, in a moment he was free with the folded rope in his hand. He looked out of the window and to his surprise he really saw the ice desert below them.

-We are really over antarctica!- he exclaimed

-Told you, calm down will you? This isn't even the best view you'll get today.

Martin looked at her surprised, inquiring if she cared to explain, but she didn't. He would have asked about it but then his stomach started rumbling. Seeing from an amused look she gave him Carla must have heard it.

-Got anything to eat?- he asked embarrassed

-Here- she pulled out a six-pack of protein bars and handed it to him

Nuts, dried banana and white chocolate, not what he'd buy but they'd do, he wasn't in position to be choosy there.

-Thanks- he said and got munching.

In few minutes he went through them and sighed, satisfied. There was little to do afterwards so he turned to Carla again. He didn't know her well, just recognized her from work, this could be a good opportunity to change that.

-So, how's your end of the mission going?- he asked

-Well, but that's a story for another time, the pilot is one of theirs.

-Oh... then how's life outside of work?

-Well too, listen in half an hour we'll be arriving at our destination so just wait patiently till then.

In thirty minutes he looked out the window and realized what he saw. His expression must have given Carla a clue as she too got up and looked out the window. She smiled.

-Well then Martin, welcome to the Edge.

[hiperboreanpirates]

The Motherfucking Lizard King

No one at work trusts my boss. 

He's smart. He works hard. He's not trustworthy. He hasn't actually fucked anyone at work over, but he's ruined his last two marriages with affairs, and got dumped by his third fiance when he wouldn't sign a prenup. The fact that we all know this is just a hazard of working in a small town. 

Anyway: The thought process of the people in the lab is that if he screwed over his first wife, and his second wife, and was probably planning on screwing over his third wife, it would be insane for him not to screw us over. After all, what kind of idiot treats their employees better than their spouse? 

I dunno. His kind, I guess? He's had a few chances to fuck us over, and he hasn't taken them. Opposite really. When our parent company was doing furloughs, he stayed in the office almost a hundred hours, talking and talking and talking his way up the corporate ladder. And in the end, no one at our site got furloughed. 

He's pulled strings like that before. And it baffles me, right? Because it really does make zero sense. He'll move the heavens and the earth for us, but his wife and kids are afterthoughts. It feels like any moment, he's going to look into the mirror and realize how stupid that is. It feels like I'm betting on him making the same stupid mistake again, and again, and again - like it would be less cynical to believe he was, eventually, going to stab me in the back. But he hasn't yet, and as far as I can tell he's been making that mistake for close to fifteen years, and it's already cost him everything it can. If he was going to learn, he would have by now. 

So my position on him is that if he wanted to date someone I cared about, I'd warn them off. I don't trust him there. But I tentatively trust him to be my boss. Maybe one day he'll stick the knife in and twist, and everyone will say Ah, Babs, we warned you, but for now, I accept that he's doing a very predictable, very irrational thing, and I've made my peace with it. 

---

My job has glue traps. 

No one likes the glue traps, but we don't have a lot of options. Poison's banned by state law, spring traps are banned by company safety, and several non-lethal options tried in the past failed to work. The mouse problem can get pretty bad if it's ignored, and there's some real health hazards in that. Our site has never had a positive hantavirus test, thank God, but the big base about a half hour away has. That guy's gonna be on oxygen the rest of his life. 

If a mouse gets caught, we just euthanize it. But more than mice get stuck. Lizards can wander into those traps too, and the people working there have different feelings about the lizards. They don't pose nearly the same kind of risk mice do. They're chill little guys, and they keep the moths away, and they're just 

You know. They're friendly. There's something to be said about walking into a room, and hitting the light switch, and seeing two little guys on the wall start to do pushups as soon as they see you. 

People used to just euthanize the lizards too, but I had pet leopard geckos as a kid and I couldn't take that so I wound up googling how to free animals from glue traps. Now, when a lizard gets stuck in a trap - which happens once or twice a week - I get some vegetable oil from the breakroom, and a little plastic fork, and I'll spend fifteen to twenty minutes just kind of gently prying the little guys out. 

I have a team of technicians that help me operate one of the larger machines. They're real blue collar guys, ex-airforce, and they make me look like a little kid. Being an engineer means they'll look to me as a leader sometimes, which is a wild experience. And I started helping the lizards for my own conscience, but one of the crazier consequences of it has been that it seriously boosted my leadership cred. Because those guys see me, and they go: Hey. If he's willing to fight for a lizard, he's gotta be willing to fight for me. 

I cannot overstate how nice that is. Most engineers that want to make a change to a maintenance practice, or try an upgrade, they have to work their asses off to get the techs to buy in. But I can just ask. They already trust me to do good. They know I'm new, and they know I'm not the smartest engineer in the building, but they also know I'm the one who gets lizards out of the glue traps. 

And just because of that, they're willing to follow me. 

---

My boss has a meeting every month or two. It's typically basic house cleaning stuff - reminders about routines we've gotten lazy on, and updates on future projects. Maybe some warnings about problems coming from higher up in the company.

People are, in my opinion, a bit too cynical about the meetings. It stems from people not trusting our boss, which again, I understand, because it would make so much more sense if he wasn't trustworthy. It's a testament to the man's incredibly unhealthy priorities that he is. But as we made it to the end of the meeting, one of bullet points was: 

Do NOT mess with animals in the building. 

So I looked at my techs, and they looked at me, and when he got to the point, he was so scathing I actually just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. He said basically that he'd heard some reports about someone in the building handling animals that found their way in and got stuck, and that he just wanted to emphasize how insanely inappropriate that was, not to mention dangerous, and that if he needed to speak to anyone about it again, there would be severe consequences. 

I was willing to just take the shame and move on. I was. But one of my techs is old. Old enough he could've retired two years ago. And his actual literal goal is to one day get angry, yell at someone, and storm out. That's how he wants to retire. So instead of biting his tongue like everyone else, he stood up and said: I hate the glue traps. You hate the glue traps. We all hate glue traps. But we've all sat here for years, ignoring the little things that get stuck in them, watching them die, and then Bab's comes in, and he is the first person in decades to give enough of a shit to start pulling the lizards out. And I don't want him to stop. 

Get humane traps or shut up but we are not going back to the old way of just letting things starve. 

And my boss actually froze up. He got all wide eyed and stared at Marc, and then the other techs jumped in, and there was a very small but intense rebellion in the meeting and my boss kept trying to interrupt while getting absolutely bowled over by this gang of angry middle aged air force vets, and eventually he just went 

I will speak with Babylon about this afterwards! After! And then he will speak with everyone else, but I have more points to cover. 

So they went silent, and my boss rushed through the last five minutes, and we all adjounred. The techs really didn't like that I was going in alone - they thought our boss was going to try and shout me into compliance. Marc in particular was like, Look, if he tries bullying you, stand your ground, and if he threatens anything, just come get us, and we'll give him hell. 

So armed with that, I went to my boss's office. I sat in the chair across from him, and he kept his composure for maybe five seconds before just flopping back into his chair. 

I had no idea you were saving lizards, he said, but I'm glad you are. I always hated seeing them die in the glue.  

I wasn't expecting that. I was about to ask him what the comment from the meeting was about then, but he answered that before I even got the chance.

A snake got into the building last week, and - someone picked it up and chased a coworker around. Turns out that coworker was severely afraid of snakes, and now it's a shitshow. We're a small site, and now I can't ask those two to work together anymore, to say nothing about how the snake fared after all that. Being upset about that is a reasonable thing, right? 

And he gave me a look like he actually wanted an answer, so I said Yeah, totally, chasing a coworker around with a snake is a dick move. Especially if that coworker is already afraid of snakes. 

And he said Exactly! and then we sat there a few moments longer. He looked so incredibly tired that I did, actually, feel kind of bad for him. And then he somehow managed to sink even further into his chair, and said

Look, I know I'm not a good guy. But I'm not evil. I'm not some sort of crazy asshole that's going to demand that everyone watch lizards starve to death. When you go back downstairs, could you try to pass that on? That I'm not evil? 

I said Sure because it wasn't a hard request, and he looked relieved. I actually made it halfway out before I realized I had a question. 

Who grabbed the snake? I asked. 

Not supposed to talk about it, he said. But whoever comes to mind first is probably right. 

ThatGuy? I asked. And he looked me in the face, nodded his head yes, and said No. 

---

The techs seemed a little disappointed that they didn't get to storm the boss's office, but were otherwise in good spirits. They were actually a little bit embarrassed to hear about the snake story - apparently, it wasn't much of a secret. It'd just slipped their minds because it happened three weeks ago. 

We did maintenance after that, the same basic repairs we did every week. The meeting had been stressful and it was a relief to work with my hands. When the parts were reinstalled, everything cleaned and smooth and ready to go, Marc found me again. 

You know what the lesson of today is? he asked. And there were quite a few answers to that that I could have taken - from don't assume the worst of people to be careful with how you spend your trust - we all need it more than we think. 

But instead I said what? because I wanted to hear what his answer was going to be. 

That I got your back, he said. Then he clapped one very, very large hand on my shoulder, gave it a good squeeze, and walked back to dosimetry lab.

---

The next day, Marc gave me a package and told me to open it in my office. I was suspicious, but I followed the request.

Cardboard gave way to a small baggie, obviously full of fabric, which opened to reveal a t-shirt that read

"I Am the Motherfucking Lizard King."

I looked at it, I loved it, and then I got an idea. I went to my boss's office and knocked on the door. When he opened it, I asked him if he would be willing to allow something very unprofessional to happen for morale building purposes.

How unprofessional? he asked. I held the shirt up in answer. He gave the shirt a short look over and snorted.

You can wear it on weeks without customers, he said. Which just so happened to include that week.

I'll pass on that it came with your blessing, I replied, and he looked oddly relieved.

Thanks, he said. And then I went downstairs.

---

The techs were very, very happy to see the shirt. And while my boss's reputation remains in tatters, and probably will be until he moves (or dies), the next time there was a meeting, there was quite a bit less complaining about how mere presence. Which is, I guess, a start.

We'll see if he squanders it.

[hiperboreanpirates]

{Hiperborean pirates #4}

-It's a misunderstanding?- Martin more asked than said, his voice as unconvinced as they would be.

-No it's not- the leader laughed.

Angela Rose was a charismatic woman that in other circumstance Martin would probably find charming despite her being almost ten years older than him. Maybe that's what made him banter instead of thinking.

-Why did you kidnap me then?- that earned him a smack on the back of his head -Sorry, why did your excellence had me kidnapped if I may know?

The members had a religious level of faight in her and that made him addressing her as "you" absolutely inexcusable. Not that he'd know, he was never religious before.

-You really will make this difficult?- she asked

-I don't quite know what your excellence is talking about.- he did intend on making this difficult

-You are a spy sent to us by the government, with orders to infiltrate deep into our structures and collect intelligence.

-And how exactly had your excellence come to that conclusion?- he knew that he could just say "madam" but her frown, deepening as her patience thinned made him forgo all his training regarding what to do in these situations.

-You are too smart for how devout you made yourself seem, after we became suspicious all we had to do was track you.

-Then if I may make an observation your excellence, kidnapping someone working for the government whose job is to verify if this organization is dangerous seems counterproductive. If your excellence were to ask me for advice, I'd advise against it.

-Quite an astute observation- she snarked -Fortunately your worries won't end up bothering us either way. Take him to the edge.

Then a bag went over his head and another smack sent him unconscious

[hiperboreanpirates]

>:3

[hiperboreanpirates]

Not a great sign when you make a 500 word outline for a maximum of 1000 words story

[hiperboreanpirates]

Show me what you've written!

It occurs to me that I haven't really seen new faces on my dash in a long time :/

Kinda wanna change that, so if you see this and you're not mutuals with me (or of you are, I'm not picky lol) reblog/comment with something you've written! (I especially love horror so if you've got something like that I am frothing at the mouth to see it)

[hiperboreanpirates]

If you ever see a 100% dark chocolate bar and wonder, who's the target audience for smth that bitter, it's me. I'm the target audience

[hiperboreanpirates]

Just like someone in the comments I like the idea of death's job to be related to harvest, though this resulted in me imagining them driving an industrial combine harvester, transferring the harvested souls through a pipe onto trucks which drive to the banks of the river styx and offload onto a container ship which transfers them into the underworld...

On a second thought this completely demolishes any and all poetic value that keeping it a harvest brought to the table.

The grim reaper was initially illustrated as doing a mundane, regular job that everyone has seen done - a reaper swings his scythe and the hay falls, just as easy as people fall as death swings. Now many people who have never been to a farm only know the scythe as the weapon of Death personified, and farmers in most places of the world don't even use them anymore.

Imagine Death personified as someone doing a modern regular, mundane job. Imagine thinking "hoo boy, this is it for me. The Grim Bin Man is coming to collect, hauling my sorry soul into the trash compactor of his great eternal garbage truck."

[hiperboreanpirates]

Just found out you can reblog things without adding anything of your own on top, might start doing that

[hiperboreanpirates]

{Hiperborean pirates #3}

He landed badly and fell as his hurt leg refused to hold his weight.

-Ouch- he complained -can you help me up? I hurt my leg in there.

-Really Martin?- he heard a tired, or maybe just annoyed feminine voice.

For a moment he felt bad for misgendering them but that quickly passed as he remembered they were the ones who kidnapped him. Did he recognize that voice though? He felt he didn't, but couldn't be sure, he recently heard too many new voices whose owners proved themselves not worth remembering.

-Yes, really, ever tried driving in a car boot? Not very comfortable let me tell you.- he said, trying to provoke another response, hear the voice.

-Oh, shut up and get up.- no, he still couldn't tell who this was

They pulled him up and dragged him in the direction of a light that soon proved to be coming from the building. 'At least it's not raining here' he thought, trying to distract himself from worrying over what waited for him inside.

-Are you sure you don't have a wrong guy? Think how many Martins there are in this city.

There was no point to this question. Well, there was, but it wasn't to actually make them question themselves. Martin just couldn't bear the silence.

Unfortunately though they didn't humor him with a response this time. Instead his foot got caught on a carpet, making him stumble, he expeted them to at least stop him from falling, but they must have had enough of him already. Rather impatient folk.

Someone let out a laugh and Martin became aware that it wasn't just them three in there.

-You caught him in the act?- a voice asked. He felt the cold sweat all over his body, he knew that voice, there was a reason to memorise it.

-And captured him without any witnesses.- the woman that brought him there confirmed.

-Did you make sure it was that postbox?- 'Oh great, they knew about the postbox' Martin thought, realizing how doomed his operation was.

-There is no doubt about that.

-Then pull of that bag off his face, it doesn't matter much if he sees and we can afford him.

The bag came off his face, proving that he was not wrong. In front of him, behind the desk sat the acting leader of "The Global Flat Earth Association", with the ridiculous crest of the organization placated behind them.

[hiperboreanpirates]

{Hiperborean pirates #2}

They threw him in the car boot, a small one though that was all he could tell with a bag over his head. That... wasn't a first but last time it was his friends pulling a prank after he got too drunk to sit straight on a backseet. He never expected to get kidnapped like that.

They didn't take his wallet even though they tapped him off, what were they after? Was the postbox compromised? It was hard to tell, especially since after stuffing him in the car they weren't kind enough to have a conversation about their plans on what to do next.

The car engine started and they started moving. At least they put on a radio, music made him better at thinking. And he did have to think, in a kidnapping it's usually much easier to escape with external help. The easiest time to do so would be while no one is watching him.

The logical conclusion was that the best time is right now. How? Kick out a break light and have someone around call the police. Definitely a better solution than trying to open the trunk and falling out into the traffic.

He waited for a chorus to start and he kicked. Whatever he hit didn't budge, he kicked again harder. With no result he had to wait for the quieter part of the song to pass and then kicked again, even harder.

-Aghhrrr!!!- he groaned

That was propbably a sprained ankle. Damn that, the agency will track them down again, not worth getting injured for this if he isn't even gonna get out. With a defeated sigh he started searching for a comfortable position.

By the time he reached a semblance of it the car stalled, slowing down and stopping somewhere and the two doors opened. He heard the men get out and walk towards tge back of the car. Then the carboot opened and he got pulled out, back into the rain.

[hiperboreanpirates]

So, this is the start, from here on now I am going to write bit by bit a story I came up with. Don't expect any consistency in upload schedule, I'm doing it only here though I might inform you if I start posting this somewhere else. This being said if you want to repost this for some reason just remember giving me credit. I'm aware of the existence of ao3, but I refuse to share the sorrowful fate of its authors so you'll have to suffer me this way. Or don't, your choice really. Will you be able to find pieces of this through consistent tags? No, I barely know how to use them. Will this be properly edited, checked for typos and stuff like that? Also no, I'm writing this on my phone there are probably typos in there already. I suppose I should add that english is not my first language if it makes any difference to anyone. Oh and all posts containing the story will have it indicated in a specific way, anyways enjoy.

{Hiperborean pirates #1}

Why would you need inside people in a flat earther group? Yes, they were the largest one on earth, yes they kept screaming on how the government spreads lies and yes they organised meetings that felt like going to a church for crazies. Despite these Martin still didn't believe that "The Global Flat Earth Association" could pose any kind of threat, definitely not the level that his superiors seemed to think about.

He snorted, tugging in deeper inyo his coat. Rain always gave him a runny nose. Just a few alleys and he'll leave his bloody envelope in that rusted mailbox and then he'll be able to go home and make himself a nice mug of hot cocoa. The water from the puddle splashed as he quickened his steps at that thought.

It was quite funny that the first time he fpund himself hating spywork was when he finally got to do what little Martin always thought it would be. Infiltrating a shady organisation, listening in on private conversations, sneaking around in search of evidence or weapons.

Really it wasn't what he was doing, it was among whom. The process of getting from the level of a regular theorist among the group and a higher up, officially accepted among them required him to lose too many braincells. Maybe the job after this will be better? He kept telling himself that it was just his first time in the field and that he'd be put to a more serious thing next time. 'Hopefully not the desk work again' he thought, he spent two years after getting hired behind the desk, sorting through evidence and copies of documents that others found in the field, all coming in the same white envelopes as the one he was now carrying.

He soon reached the place and left his report in, the unassuming box was connected to a shute, which would get what he needed straight to the agency. As usual he had to resist the urge to look around while using the box, it has been pounded into his head that he makes himself suspicious every time he does that.

Now all that was left was to get home. He could take a bus to avoid the rain but it was a short enough walk to make it feel like a waste. Still, walking home would take longer and he could catch a cold from how wet he'd get. One option left then, the shady alley shortcut it is.

On his way home there was a not too long narrow unlit alley that saved him a few minutes of walking if he took it, he usually avoided it but this time he didn't think much. He got lost in thoughts, already smelling the cocoa and feeling the warmth of his bed, so much so that he didn't notice the steps from behind him. And then a bag was thrown over his head.

[hiperboreanpirates]

Hi to anyone that finds this, at the time of me writing this I have barely any idea how this place works, but I'm planning to subject you lot to a story (when I get to it) that I have in mind, which I hope to make any sense eventually, gotta finish some prior writting commitments before I start though.